By the time his Lordship’s meditations had reached this point, his Lordship’s horse had reached the Pandemonium, which fact, forcing itself on his Lordship’s attention, he dismounted, and, consigning the animal to the care of his groom, entered the club-room, when, of course, the first person he encountered, was Horace D’Almayne! Owing to Lord Alfred’s absence from town, D’Almayne had not seen him since his return from the continent, he, therefore, advanced to meet him with the greatest empressement, greeting him with the usual “Ah! mon cher,” which he reserved for those of his associates whom he particularly delighted to honour. Great, therefore, was his astonishment and disgust, when Lord Alfred walked past him with his head in the air, and his eyes immovably fixed upon the cornice of the apartment.
For a moment D’Almayne could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses, so much at variance was his late pupil’s conduct with Horace’s pre-conceived ideas of his gentle, yielding character; but a covert smile on the faces of Barrington and several of the usual club-loungers, was sufficient to convince him of the irritating fact, that in the presence of the very men, before whom he had often boasted of and paraded his intimacy with and influence over Lord Alfred Courtland, that young nobleman had most decidedly and unequivocally cut him. For some days past D’Almayne had perceived a change to have “come o’er the spirit” in which he had been received by society at large. Intimates had suddenly become slight acquaintances; slight acquaintances had grown strangely short-sighted; and when he forced himself upon their notice, appeared afflicted with a painful degree of stiffness in the “upper spine.” Still, until that moment, no one had ventured actually to cut him. Now the matter had come to a climax, Horace felt himself brought fairly to bay, and in such a frame of mind he was dangerous. After Lord Alfred had passed D’Almayne, he touched the Honourable William Barrington, alias Billy Whipcord, on the arm, and drawing him aside, said—
“I have just been let into a pleasant little secret; it seems that the reason my dis-honourable young acquaintance, Mr. Tirrett, set his face so determinately against riding Don Pasquale was that the notable quadruped had a screw loose in the back sinew of one of its inestimable fore-legs, and Tirrett was afraid he would break down in the race. Now as I have become aware of this only within the last half hour, I daresay I have asked, and you have given, too much for the brute. Caveat emptor may be a very good general maxim, but I never can see why a gentleman should act about selling a horse in a manner undeserving that title—so, if you find the creature unsound I shall be happy to hand you back a fifty-pound note, or more, if you require it. I’ve passed my ‘little go,’ as a patron of the turf, and wish to come out of it with clean hands ere I take my leave of that noble pastime.”
“Really, my dear Courtland, you’re too chivalrous,” was the reply; “but I’m quite content with my bargain; the Don is sound enough to answer my purpose” (he had sold him that morning, and pocketed a cool hundred by the transfer), “and if he were not, I have purchased him, and must abide the loss;—but, excuse me, are you aware that you have just cut Horace D’Almayne?”
“As he deserves to be cut by every honourable man,” interrupted Lord Alfred, “and, for reasons which I will explain here before every member of this club now present, if he has the audacity to—to venture to force himself upon me,” he continued angrily, as he perceived D’Almayne sauntering up to him, with his accustomed listless gait indeed, but with a sparkle in his eye, and a red spot on each cheek, which, to those who were well acquainted with him, showed that he was unusually excited.
“Has foreign travel, and the lapse of a fortnight, really altered me so much that your Lordship is unable to recognize an old friend; or to what other circumstance am I to attribute your singular failure of memory when I accosted you on your entrance?” he inquired in his most superciliously polite tone and accent.
“Attribute it to its right cause,” was the spirited reply; “that I desire to associate only with men of honour, an idiosyncracy which precludes my longer availing myself of the privilege of Mr. D’Almayne’s society.”
“In fact, that, having made use of me to convert a raw school-boy into a very tame specimen of a fast man, you fancy now you are able to run alone, and that it will add to your reputation for fastness to kick down the ladder by which you have mounted the social mole-hill you stand on,” was the sneering answer; “but you have mistaken your man, my Lord. Horace D’Almayne is not a puppet of which you hold the wires, to dance, or to be thrown aside, at your Lordship’s pleasure. Had you simply chosen to deny me your further acquaintance, I should have set the gain of valuable minutes against the loss of one of the social incubi my good-nature has entailed upon me, and overlooked the boyish impertinence; but as you have seen fit to insult me publicly, nothing short of an equally public apology will satisfy me. Should you be infatuated enough to refuse me this, I will for once flatter your Lordship’s vanity by supposing you man enough to be aware of the alternative.”
As D’Almayne spoke, he drew himself up with an expression of contemptuous superiority, half-pitying, half-defiant, which he imagined highly effective.
It certainly had one effect, that of rousing Lord Alfred’s temper to the utmost extent; and, with flashing eyes and quivering lips, he replied—